Not being serious about budget cuts in Raleigh

Here in North Carolina, we're all waiting to see how the legislature will resolve our huge budget deficit. Right now they're talking about tax increases and some budget cuts. As this filters down to the county level, schools are waiting with dread to see if their cuts will be as high as the 18% number that had been bruited about. But the Raleigh City Council has found one expense they won't cut - public art.

Has art become the sacred cow of Raleigh politics?

This week, the City Council voted to keep funding for the arts at $4.50 per resident, or about $1.71 million annually, in the next fiscal year's budget. City Manager Russell Allen had proposed cutting arts funding to $4 per resident, which would have saved the city $190,000.

Philip Isley, the lone council member to vote against the budget, said he would have supported the budget if it had included a cut to arts funding. Isley argued that the city's arts funding would have been generous at $4 per resident. Given the bad economy, that money could have been better spent on other things, Isley said.

Council member Nancy McFarlane, Mayor Charles Meeker and others argued that the arts community is an integral part of the city's economy.

"They are a huge economic driver," McFarlane said. "I think we're looking at a financial benefit."

The decision to not cut funding for the arts comes four months after the City Council voted 6-2, with Isley and Councilman Rodger Koopman voting no, to dedicate a constant stream of taxpayers' money for the creation and development of public art for city buildings, parks and other public spaces.

A new public art coordinator's position was created to run the program, and a contract has been offered that would pay the coordinator $52,000 for the 32-hour-a-week job. This week, the Wake Community PAC criticized the creation of the coordinator's position while the city has an informal hiring freeze in place for everything but public safety jobs.

While the numbers are that huge in the whole scheme of things, it does seem a strange message to send that public art is so very important that we'll maintain and even increase spending despite facing cuts in all sorts of other services. If public art is supposedly such a huge "economic driver" what about budget cuts for city inspectors and filling pot holes?